


I'll be hoping that I served you well

by savvyliterate



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-09
Updated: 2012-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 17:27:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvyliterate/pseuds/savvyliterate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> It was nice to have a companion that didn't fancy herself (or himself) in love with him. </p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll be hoping that I served you well

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to ["If I keep them in, such feelings will tear me apart,"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/342861) because I felt Phoebe's story deserved to be told.

_“You know, you really could do something else with that musket.” The strange, strange man wearing the odd jacket, silk around his neck and floppy hair lowered his hands and carefully stepped toward her._

_Her hands shook as she kept the musket pointed at the so-called Doctor. “I’ve accidentally destroyed my family home, what do you suggest I do with it?”_

_He moved even closer. “Well … you could travel with me.”_

_She lowered the musket. She stared at the blue box parked near the edge of the village, stared at her family clustered together as they stared at the flaming ruins of the life they had struggled for years to build, all brought down by an errant bullet as Phoebe tried to save her family from something called “aliens.” Well, he had called them Sontarans, but still … “Do they know it’s me? That I did this?”_

_“No. They believe it’s the Redcoats.”_

_She tugged her shawl around herself, bit her lip … and Phoebe Webster followed the strange Doctor into his stranger blue box and disappeared._

\-----

“You do realize you can’t take her back,” River pointed out as they stood in the back of the 1820s ballroom, watching as Phoebe was passed from one eligible bachelor to another. The unexpected arrival of Lord and Lady Song (“Yes, sweetie, it does work that way”) and their debutante “daughter” had sent the tongues of the Ton wagging, and the gossip further increased as Phoebe had quickly become the Season’s Incomparable after just a few minutes. 

“Of course I can, just like every other companion,” the Doctor huffed, really quite bored of it all. But Phoebe had wanted to dance, and River had chosen the place, and his wife really did look rather splendid in the low-cut gown she wore. She’d looked even more splendid about 15 minutes earlier in a remote part of the gardens with her skirts hiked above her waist, her bodice tugged down and his hands and lips had been  everywhere . 

He could hardly complain. After Jack and River had dropped in to save them from the Valley of the Kings, River had decided to take her time in going back to Stormcage, and he was absolutely fine in keeping her there. It’d been the longest amount of linear time they’d spent together since the earliest days of their marriage, and neither one of them were going to take this time for-granted. The clock was ticking down for both of them, and they were going to seize as much time together as they could.

“That’s not how it works, and not with every other companion. You even left Susan behind on a different planet and era.” River lightly swatted his arm with her fan.

“Well, other  recent companions. Things turned out well with … well, with Martha.”

River sighed. “Eventually.”

“Your parents are …” His throat seized and the ballroom suddenly looked very watery. “Your parents are doing well,” he managed.

River didn’t say anything, but he could see the pain in her eyes. “Right! Phoebe!” he chirped. “Tell me, dear, why would Phoebe not belong in her own time?”

“Look at her, my love.” River’s gaze followed Phoebe as she accepted one of her allowed waltzes. “It’s rough enough going back to a life in the 21st century. You can explain that away with cellphones, the Internet, all sorts of things. Taking her back to 1777 would kill her, especially with the knowledge she has now.”

“Or, she could do great things. Fantastic things! She is just brilliant!” The Doctor pressed his lips to her ear. “You’ve grown attached.”

River scoffed and flicked her fan open, in the process rapping the Doctor’s nose sharply with the edge. “Like you don’t grow attached?”

“I don’t.” Her eyebrow arched. “Well, a little.” It arched higher. “OK, maybe more than a little, and how can you get your eyebrow that high anyhow?”

“Oh, stop it,” she said with a laugh. 

“Never,” he replied with a grin and tapped her nose. He threaded his arm through hers, and they looked upon Phoebe dancing like the proud parents they were suppose to be. 

\-----

It was nice to have a companion that didn’t fancy herself (or himself) in love with him. Even in the few adventures he’d had with Phoebe before River joined them, she’d reminded him far more of Susan or a young Sarah Jane. The young colonial had dealt with the culture shock extremely well, but she had left in a time of war and great change. It seemed a shame almost to take Phoebe out of one of the richest eras in American history, but he would take her back.

While River had met all of the companions he’d had since Amy and Rory left the TARDIS, she easily spent the most time with Phoebe. She taught the girl how to read since her education had stalled when the younger siblings kept coming. Soon, Phoebe constantly had her nose stuck in a book, discovering in the process that she was near-sighted. That had led the Doctor and River to a heated discussion over whether or not to get her glasses, and in the end, the Doctor “accidentally” left the nanogenes out while urging Phoebe to get something he didn’t need from the medical bay. Phoebe never remarked on her suddenly improved eyesight, the Doctor never commented on how it got there in the first place, and River merely shook her head and distracted them all by taking them to a new planet.

Yes, the Doctor decided as Phoebe blossomed from the cusp of puberty to a beautiful young lady. They would take Phoebe back to her own time and that was that. He’d learned from those slaps Jackie Tyler had given him a long time ago.

He would take her back as soon as they’d climbed the rolling mountains of Yixang.

He was certainly going to take her back as soon as they finally dropped off River at Stormcage. Well, except Phoebe had missed River dreadfully, so he wound up picking her up that night and he would simply have to take Phoebe back the next time.

Oh, it was  absolutely time to take Phoebe back when she had six marriage proposals in a single night when they went to the tango competition on Mars II.

“How long do you want to stay?” The Doctor finally asked Phoebe one day. He already knew the answer. “Forever” tended to be the favorite term that his companions used. It was usually a good sign that the end of their stay on the TARDIS was pretty near.

Phoebe twirled her braid around a finger as she translated hieroglyphics under her breath. “Well,” she said after a moment, “when I’ve found it.”

“Found what?”

“I don’t know.” She gingerly turned the page in her book. “I feel like I’m searching for something.” She tossed the braid over her shoulder. “Can we go get River now?”

“Yes, yes, I’m on my way.” The Doctor left Phoebe to her studies. Fetching River. That was an excellent idea. He whistled as he strode into the console room and, to his surprise, River was already waiting. Her hair was even more wild than usual, meaning she’d used the vortex manipulator. She wasn’t trying to pat it back into place though. She was staring rather blankly at the monitor, a book held loosely in one hand.

“Hello, dear! When are we today?” He bounded to her side, and the smile dropped from his face as he saw her devastated eyes. “What happened?”

“Where’s Phoebe?” River asked, her voice thick, and he saw the traces of tears on her cheeks.

“In your library, which she’s taken over. But she asked me to come for you, she …”

“Then not here.” River grabbed his hand and pulled him up the stairs and to their bedroom. She dropped his hand and paced to the bed, throwing the book on the duvet before burying her face in her hands. 

Not quite sure what to do, but fairly certain it was because of the book, the Doctor reached for it.

“Don’t touch it,” River snapped, but he ignored her. “Doctor, please, don’t.”  She made a grab for the book, but he already saw the pages she’d marked. 

Fury swept through him as he read each paragraph before tossing the book away. “Why the hell did you go looking for that?” he hissed.

“Do you honestly think that even for a minute that I would purposefully go searching out information like that?” River’s voice was soft but dangerous as she pressed her face into his, personal space be damned. “I am, as you so often remind me, an archaeologist. Therefore, occasionally, I might actually do my job and go do excavations in say … Pennsylvania in the United States. And furthermore, during the excavation, come across information by accident in the name of honestly doing my job.  If you even think I was trying to cheat time, I am walking out this door.”

The anger drained as quickly as it’d pumped through him, and he sagged into her. She wrapped her arms around his waist, softly stroking his back as he struggled with the knowledge that she’d found. “Time can be rewritten,” he murmured.

“Not all of it, and you know it.” River’s voice was firm now, snapping him out of the daze. “Doctor, we can’t take her back. There’s no place for her, and we’d be condemning her to death. It’s not like she’s any sort of burden.”

“No, of course not.” He stepped away from her, pushing his hands through his hair. “But, what do we do with her? Take her some place where she knows absolutely no one? No family, no friends, out of her own time completely?”

“You’ve done it before.”

“They formed attachments! Susan, Leela, Peri, Ace … they’d at least developed relationships with other people. Even Rose had her mother and Mickey when she got trapped. What do we do if Phoebe wants to leave but on her own?”

“It doesn’t seem like that time has come yet, so we’ll decide when we get to that point. And, yes, we,” River emphasized. “I’m not letting you do this one alone.”

The Doctor just stared at River. She’d grown attached to Phoebe, they both had. They hadn’t quite reached the end of River’s timeline yet. There was still the  Byzantium , the picnic at Asgard with his 10th self and more. She’d yet to be pardoned or receive her professorship. It felt dangerous to even entertain the thought that River would be there long enough to help him decide what to do with Phoebe, but he wanted it  so badly that he didn’t say anything at all. 

\-----

Like with so much foreknowledge, the Doctor dealt with it the best way he knew how -- by ignoring it until the last possible minute. Time passed and Phoebe grew older. River’s knowledge had included discovering the approximate time Phoebe was born, and she’d been 15 when she’d first step on the TARDIS.  River  kept track on a linear calendar as Phoebe celebrated her 16th, 17th and 18th birthdays. Her years on the TARDIS rivaled that of Sarah Jane and Romana, even outlasting Amy, Rory and Ace. The only companion he’d had longer was Susan.

“We have to tell her, my love,” River told him one night as they curled in bed together. “She’s an adult now, she has the right to make her own decisions.” She laid a finger over his lips. “I know you mean well, but when you tend to make the decisions for us …”

“There’s something called maintaining the timelines,” the Doctor muttered against River’s finger, thought of the Library, and his hearts hurt.

“What’s going to change for Phoebe if you tell her what happens? If you send her back without knowing, you’ll be hurting her more than you ever realize. You’re giving her a choice, and if you don’t let her make that choice, you will be changing history.”

He sighed, because he’d reached a point in his long life where he couldn’t tell his wife no. “Will you …”

“Of course I’ll be here, my love.”

It turned out that Phoebe had been the one to force their hand.

“I was thinking it was time to visit my family,” she commented as their had beignets in New Orleans in 1994. She licked powdered sugar off her fingers and watched as the Doctor and River stared into their drinks. “But, I can’t, can I?”

“What makes you say that?” the Doctor asked.

“Well, you used to talk all the time about taking me home eventually. Now, you won’t bring it up at all. Made me wonder about it, about why you wouldn’t talk about them anymore.” Phoebe stared at the remaining pastry on her plate and took several deep breaths. “Is my family dead?”

“No!” River immediately slid her chair over to Phoebe’s and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “Your family is fine, Phoebe, I promise you that.”

Her eyes met River’s. “Then it’s me,” she said flatly. “I’m dead.”

“Your family reported you dead after the fire,” the Doctor said softly. “River found out two years ago by accident.”

“They believe the British soldiers killed you and left your body in the inn,” River continued as tears silently streamed down Phoebe’s cheeks. “They had no way of not knowing at the time.”

“But … but, we’ve got the TARDIS. You can just take me back, right? Leave me there during the fire, right after we left?”

“Some times, it doesn’t work like that, sweetheart,” River said, rubbing circles on Phoebe’s back. “Even if we timed it just right, physically you don’t look anywhere near the age you were when you left.”

“With your age, your knowledge, and the beliefs of your era,” the Doctor continued, “you would either be accused as a traitor or tried as a witch. You’d most likely be killed.”

“It’s still your choice whether or not you want to go back,” River took over again. “But, that’s what you would be returning to.”

Phoebe leaned into River. “Is it wrong to feel glad?” she confessed. “I miss my family, but …”

“You don’t miss your old life.”

“Yes.” 

“It’s not wrong at all to feel that way,” she told her, and the Doctor remembered a conversation from a very long time ago when a much younger version of his now-wife confessed the same thing as they sat across from each other at a cafe table at Luna University. “It doesn’t mean you don’t love your parents or your siblings any less.”

“But, where will I go when I leave the TARDIS if I can’t go home?”

“You can stay,” the Doctor immediately spoke up, a bit surprised at himself. The way River arched her eyebrow -- and he still never figured out how she did that -- indicated the same thing. “As long as you’d like.”

“Thank you, but I want to do something on my own. Besides, Jack wasn’t kidding about needing the earplugs. Is there some place on the TARDIS you two haven’t umm … what’s the word … shagged.”

The Doctor immediately went scarlet as River smirked. 

Phoebe didn’t say anything for a few minutes. The coffee grew cold and the pastries soggy. She glanced at River. “Can I think about it?”

“Of course. Take all the time you need.”

\-----

The Doctor found Phoebe with River’s book not long after that, reading the history of her family through and after the Revolutionary War. “They all lived,” she said with a sense of wonder. She hugged the book to her chest. “That’s good. I like that. They also rebuilt the inn. It’s still standing as of the early 21st century.”

So the TARDIS took them there after a slight detour to pick up Jack, and they had an absolutely lovely meal, and Phoebe was rather tickled to discover she was now a ghost story.

“I’m a vengeful ghost,” she said with glee, mischief in her eyes. “I’m still killing the Redcoats to this day!”

“Has she picked up on the fact that you tend to spend an extremely high proportion of your time in the United Kingdom?” Jack said as Phoebe studied the sketches of the ‘ghost’ on the wall. “And that River is British?”

“Technically, I’m half-Scottish and whatever nationality you can claim when you’re born on an asteroid in the middle of nowhere,” River replied, sipping at her drink. “I’ve never really considered myself all that loyal to the mother country.”

“Yes, Amy told me what you did once during ‘God Save the Queen.’” The Doctor peered around Jack to glower at his grinning wife. “Really, River? You replaced the class portrait of the Queen with a Teletubby?”

“The detention was worth it.”

Because they felt that Phoebe was theirs, they spent a lot of time debating possible futures.

“No Time Agency, no Torchwood,” the Doctor ordered Jack. “None of that stuff that could possibly get her blown up.”

“Like you don’t nearly get her blown up on a regular basis,” Jack pointed out, and the Doctor ignored him.

“She could go to any school she likes,” River suggested. “I can talk with Professor Candy, we can easily get her situated at Luna.”

“Actually,” Phoebe spoke up, and they glanced at the stairs to see her dressed in a nightie, clutching her dressing gown around her. “There’s some place I’d love to go back to.”

\-----

The Ton had even more to gossip about as the mysterious Lord and Lady Song returned with their daughter the next night to one of the more exclusive balls. The young Lady Phoebe’s dance card was filled, she had three waltzes and and the attention of many men. But one young man in particular had caught Lady Phoebe’s eye.

“Is it really what you want? Anywhere you want in time and space, Phoebe,” the Doctor told her quietly as Phoebe informed the closest thing she had to parents that she wanted to get married.

“I want what you have,” Phoebe replied. “I want someone to look at me the way you do at River. And don’t tell me that you don’t, because you do. All the time, even when she’s not here. If I had someone who loved me the way you love each other, I could do anything I want, even in 1822.”

So the Doctor got to play the role of father as the young duke asked for Phoebe’s hand in marriage. He made sure he was properly terrifying, because he hadn’t gotten to do that for Susan. They’d actually disappeared for awhile, and River’s suspicions that the Doctor had spirited the duke away on the TARDIS were realized as they came back with their clothes torn and their arms around each other, laughing their heads off.

“Well, he didn’t run,” River told Phoebe.

“He didn’t run the first time either,” Phoebe said a bit cheekily and River raised that eyebrow again.

“Remember that first party? When you and the Doctor well …  disappeared into the gardens?” Phoebe calmly sipped her lemonade. “I sneaked him onto the TARDIS then. We had a smashing time time in the 60s, and he really liked the Beatles. I figured if time travel didn’t scare him, I had to marry him some day.”

River laughed and knew Phoebe was going to be just fine.


End file.
